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Old Navy is open for 31 straight hours this Black Friday. The only way to truly understand the reality of a 31-hour workday is to dive in at its darkest hour. So I did.
Sapna Maheshwari for BuzzFeed
Why would anyone go shopping at Old Navy at 3 a.m.?
This question has intrigued me ever since I read about Old Navy's Black Friday plans earlier this month. The chain announced it would stay open for an "unprecedented 31 hours" straight, starting at 4 p.m. on Thanksgiving and ending at 11 p.m. on Black Friday.
Thirty-one straight hours! By that logic, I reasoned, people must actually want to go to Old Navy at 2, 3, even 4 a.m. I found this...astonishing.
Millions of Americans are drawn to Black Friday deals like moths to a flame; for many, it has a magnetism akin to Ryan Gosling's smile, a pull like that of Disneyland to a child. The retail industry, dramatically, calls this weekend "the Super Bowl of shopping."
But Old Navy! It's not Walmart, where the discounts on flat-screen TVs and tablets are enough to rally tryptophan-soaked bodies from boozy slumber into a consumer battleground.
And it's not the outlet stores, where I've witnessed women succumb to a form of midnight hysteria uniquely triggered by dirt-cheap Kate Spade bags and cut-rate Le Creuset dishes. No, if you're going to Old Navy at 3 a.m., you're up in the dead of the night for $8 fleeces and $3 socks that are also for sale online and during the rest of the day. So why? Why? Why would you go at that hour?
I needed to find out. And that's how I ended up in the mostly empty parking lot of the Crystal Mall in Waterford, Connecticut, at 3 a.m. on Black Friday.
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Natalie DuBose spent her life savings opening a small bakery in Ferguson this June, and saw it trashed during protests this week. People have donated more than $170,000 in two days to help her rebuild.
Via gofundme.com
It was a devastating situation: Natalie Dubose, a single mother of two young children, poured her life savings into her dream of opening a bakery in Ferguson, Missouri this June. This week, amid the Monday night protests that overtook the town, Natalie's Cakes & More saw its windows smashed in, glass and debris ruining baking supplies, and marring the storefront she had invested so much time and money in.
But her story took a twist after a couple of strangers asked how they might be able to make a donation to help rebuild. In short order, two GoFundMe pages (which have now been consolidated to one) popped up with a goal of raising $20,000.
And now, on the eve of Thanksgiving, Natalie's Cakes & More has received more than $170,000 in donations from thousands of well-wishers, and its Facebook page is overrun with messages of support from all over the nation: Ohio, Minnesota, Florida, New York, Arizona, South Carolina, to name a few, and even one from Amsterdam.
"It's just been totally overwhelming," Dubose told BuzzFeed News on a brief break from baking cakes and filling orders for the busy Thanksgiving weekend. "I'm just grateful. Grateful is the only word I can describe feeling right now."
The money that has flooded in is far more than was asked for, and will be able to pay for much more than just repairs to the store. Dubose, buried in work fulfilling Thanksgiving-weekend orders, hasn't had the time to think through how she will use the incredible windfall.
“Jay’s real name isn’t even Jay. It’s short for James. James Horatio Crunch, as in the son of Horatio Magellan Crunch, or as most people know him — Captain Crunch.”
Serial / Via serialpodcast.org
The description reads: "Baltimore, MD - 1999. A bowl of Fruity Pebbles has gone missing. Adnan Syed, a senior at Woodlawn High School, is the main suspect. But is everything really as it seems? And what's the real story behind 'Jay' H. Crunch, the police informant? Find out on this week's episode of Cereal Podcast."
Kyle Scheele / Via teespring.com
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The most successful animated film of all time will result in hundreds of millions in sales for retailers. It could even knock Pokémon from its two-decade stint as the king of all kids
Toys 'R' Us / Via toysrus.com
A year after Frozen was released, the film is still stealing the show — this time, in the toy aisles. Products linked to the movie are so popular that they're unseating Barbie, and may even, according to a a Toys 'R' Us executive, surpass Pokémon as the biggest kids' hit in recent decades.
Frozen is the hottest toy property this holiday season, predicted to bring in $1 billion in sales in the U.S., and retailers are eager to cash in. Toys 'R' Us says it's carrying more than 300 kinds of Frozen items; Target has 600; Walmart has upwards of 700. "You would be crazy not to have Frozen right now," Kohl's general merchandise manager Amy Kocourek said in an October conference call.
Even the big man of the holiday season has been subsumed by the trend. In ten malls owned by Taubman Centers, Santa will be seated this year in a 30-foot tall Frozen-themed ice palace. Children "will delight in playing in a magical snowfall in the Ice Palace," the company said in a statement.
Obviously Elsa and Anna costumes are flying off the shelves — Disney said earlier this month it's already sold 3 million of them. But then there's more: Frozen hot cocoa mugs, fleece ponchos, blankets, art sets, Frozen microphones and amplifiers, singing Olafs, mini guitars, a Play-Doh "Sparkle Snow Dome," art cases, 3-piece "Toddler Sleepover Slumber Sacks," hooded Elsa bath towels, Frozen "Napmats," roller skates, "Alpine Adventure Playlands," bicycles, electric scooters and "boxed music sets" with themed flutes, maracas and tambourines. T
The crown jewel appears to be Fisher-Price's Disney Frozen Ford Mustang — yours for $300.
Frozen ice palace at a mall.
Frozen merchandise actually beat out Barbie as the top toy for little girls in the National Retail Federation's 11th annual toys survey, with one in five parents saying they planned to buy one. It's the first time in the survey's history that Barbie was beaten to the top spot.
Richard Barry, executive vice president and chief merchandising officer of Toys 'R' Usnoted, said boys are also getting in on the Frozen fray with characters like Olaf, a quirky snowman sidekick in the movie that's a favorite with his own 9-year-old son.
"Literally any product you could possibly want has Frozen on it, and certainly you could deck out your whole bedroom and accessorize it in a big way, even items like storage and backpacks," Barry said, noting the Frozen Power Wheels vehicle, exclusive to Toys 'R' Us, is "doing just great."
While the world of toy selling is driven by yearly crazes, the rush for Frozen merchandise is about more than just the annual hot item, some retail executives say. The mammoth popularity of the movie — it has become the most successful animated film ever made — means its characters are more popular among kids than anything in recent decades.
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The company said it was rolling out “offers” today for Twitter advertisers.
Twitter is beginning to test a new product for advertisers: The ability to promote "offers" that are tied to a Twitter user's credit card.
The company is beginning the test with a collection of brands over the holiday season. When a Twitter user sees an offer, they can add it to their credit or debit card. Then, when that user makes a purchase, the cash-back offer is redeemed directly to their card within a few days, the company said. Advertisers will be able to measure the uptake of the offers and see how each offer is translating into in-store sales, much like how they can monitor how specific ads are performing.
Alongside its large and healthy advertising business, Twitter has built out an arsenal of revenue-generating services under the guidance of top executive Adam Bain. Twitter Offers is yet another new tool being rolled out as the company works to convince investors that it is worthy of its $25 billion valuation.
But while the commercial side rolls on, the company has had a hard time attracting new users, and there has been a lot of executive turnover, particularly among the people leading the company's product side. While the company can grow by creating new revenue-generating products or selling more ads, growing user numbers are still a crucial part of the equation.
Earlier this year, Twitter began rolling out a new tool that would allow Twitter users to buy things directly from their timelines. The new offers tool is basically an extension of that, allowing advertisers to use a relatively traditional tactic to attract potentially new and existing customers to make a purchase.
Twitter, like Facebook, knows what its users like based on the other accounts they follow, building up what is typically called in the industry an "interest graph." While Facebook is seen to have one of the strongest stores of data about its users — including real name, age, gender, location, and the things they like — Twitter since going public has made the case to investors that it also has a strong and unique understanding of its users.
Under a deal a struck with internet conglomerate Tencent Holdings, HBO shows such as True Detective , Newsroom and others will be available for streaming in China for the first time ever.
The Associated Press
HBO, which last year struck a deal with Amazon to make its original programs available for streaming, announced today a partnership with internet conglomerate Tencent Holdings to bring its shows to China for the the first time ever.
The deal, which was announced at a conference in Beijing, makes Tencent the exclusive provider of HBO shows for streaming in China. Included among the shows that will be available to Chinese audiences via Tencent Video are Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, Rome, Newsroom, True Detective, and others.
Other terms of the deal were not provided, among them how much Tencent is paying HBO to license its shows, whether all seasons of a show will be available at once or have a staggered release, and if it was negotiated exclusively or if it was an auction process open to other bidders such as Alibaba.
HBO structured its Amazon deal earlier in the year very carefully so as to avoid cannibalizing subscribers to its main pay-TV network. Under that deal, previous seasons of newer HBO shows, such as Girls, Newsroom, and Veep only become available approximately three years after airing on HBO. While neither side disclosed financial terms, using previous deals with other networks and streaming services as a guide, analysts estimated that HBO will receive about $200 million per year from Amazon. A source with knowledge of the deal told BuzzFeed News at the time that HBO negotiated exclusively with Amazon and didn't put its content up for auction.
Chinese internet companies such as Tencent, which focuses on social networking via WeChat and gaming, and Alibaba, which dominates e-commerce globally, are in a pitched battle for users and advertisers and view movies and television shows as a way to differentiate their platforms from each other. Those companies and others have collectively spent around $1 billion on streaming deals for movies and television shows over the last two years. Shortly after Alibaba's IPO in September, which raised $25 billion and ranks as the largest initial public offering ever on a U.S. exchange, its CEO, Jack Ma, met with pretty much every Hollywood studio head with the aim of striking streaming deals.
In September, Guo Guangchang, the billionaire chairman of China's Fosun Group, agreed to invest what reports claim is in excess of $100 million in former Warner Bros executive Jeff Robinov's new production house Studio 8. A month later, Japan's Softbank, which owns about one-third of Alibaba and raised about $4.6 billion in that company's IPO, struck a deal to invest $250 million in Legendary Pictures, which has helped finance or produce such films as Godzilla, 300, and the Dark Knight franchise. Prior to its Legendary deal, Softbank was rumored to be close to buying Dreamworks Animation for $3.4 billion. Other, earlier deals have also been struck between Asian companies and studios like Disney, Fox, and The Weinstein Company, among others.
But the companies must balance the desire for foreign entertainment content, particularly from the U.S., against the onerous censorship restrictions of the Chinese government. A number of shows have been deemed "obscene" and ordered to be taken down, among them CBS's Big Bang Theory and The Good Wife. The Chinese government also has strict limits on the amount of foreign content a streaming service can offer.
HBO's shows are known for pushing the boundaries, with many of the titles included under the deal with Tencent featuring sex, murder, drug use and other vices as core plot devices. Presumably, the HBO shows Tencent is licensing will be subject to approval and censorship by Chinese authorities. Tencent said only in its release announcing the deal that it hopes the shows will be available to users in the "very near future."
Falcone became on the country’s highest earning hedge fund managers because of his bet against subprime mortgages in 2007, but soon became mired in legal troubles.
Phil Falcone, the departing CEO and chairman of Harbinger Group.
Brendan Mcdermid / Reuters
The billionaire hedge fund manager Phil Falcone is leaving the conglomerate he attempted to build after making billions during the financial crisis and then being dragged through a years-long battle over a bankrupt wireless company.
Falcone's company, the Harbinger Group, announced Tuesday morning that Falcone would leave the company, effective December 1. Falcone was chairman and chief executive of Harbinger, he will be replaced as chairman by Joseph Steinberg, a member of the board. Harbinger did not announce a successor.
Falcone will be getting over $40 million for leaving the company — a $20.5 million one-time severance payment, his $16.5 million previously awarded bonus for 2014, and $3.3 million worth of a bonus for the 2015 fiscal year.
Falcone's net worth is $1 billion, according to Forbes. It was over $2 billion in 2011.
Falcone became famous for his prescient bet against subprime mortgages in 2007, but quickly faced losses in 2008 and some investors asked to pull money from his funds.
He then become mired in a long regulatory and legal fight over LightSquared, a wireless communications company majority owned by his fund, Harbinger Capital Partners. It was never able to operate after a 2012 Federal Communications Commission ruling which said that its network would interfere with GPS signals.
Falcone was then enmeshed in a long battle with Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen over ownership of the company after it filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Harbinger Group owns a variety of consumer brands like Black & Decker and George Foreman grills, as well as a Baltimore-based reinsurance company Fidelity and Guaranty Life and Bermuda-based reinsurer FrontStreet Re. Falcone had previously said that he wanted to move away from hedge fund trading and instead invest long term in companies through Harbinger.
"During Mr. Falcone's tenure as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, the Company experienced significant growth and success, beginning as a company with approximately $140 million market capitalization in 2009 rising to today's market capitalization of approximately $2.6 billion," Steinberg said in a statement.
"We thank Phil for his many years of hard work and leading HGI."
In August of last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission imposed a five year ban on managing outside investor money for Falcone following a settlement over accusations that he had borrowed money from the fund to pay his personal taxes in 2009 and prevented investors from getting money out of the fund. Harbinger and Falcone also had to pay an $18 million fine.
Falcone, however, was still allowed by the SEC to maintain his affiliation with various Harbinger entities, including Harbinger Capital Partners. In a statement, Harbinger Group said Falcone Keith Hladek, a director that will also resign, "are expected to dedicate their efforts to HC2 Holdings, Inc. and Harbinger Capital Partners." HC2 Holdings invests in telecommunications, undersea cable, steel, and other comapnies. Falcone is the company's chairman.
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New mobile apps launched by Facebook’s Creative Labs have mostly been busts. Facebook Product Manager Josh Miller says it’s a learning process.
A ranking history of Rooms, a standalone application created by Facebook.
AppAnnie
By app ranking standards, most of the new mobile apps coming out of Facebook's "Creative Labs" initiative haven't been particularly successful.
Consider Paper, a news reader, or Slingshot, for sharing photos. Each plays on hugely popular aspects of the core Facebook product. Both have fallen fast in the leaderboards since being launched, and neither have become a smash hit, despite being backed up by the vast reach and promotional power of the world's largest social network.
The problem is partly one of execution, says Facebook product manager Josh Miller, whose company was acquired by Facebook earlier this year. Thus far, one of the company's standalone applications called Rooms — which is similar to Facebook Groups, but without a specific Facebook identity tied to them — fits with that trend, he says: A solid hypothesis for a product, but yet to take off.
"The thing we're really spot on with and have something going for us, we know this is a use case that people care about," he told BuzzFeed News. "There are definitely things we think we got wrong. Every product changes."
In order to improve on that execution, Facebook is releasing a few updates to the application Monday to make it a bit more user-friendly. The company is adding a dashboard to track user activity in the app, as well as the option for push notifications with different kinds of sounds. The goal, Miller said, is to help people find it useful beyond other Facebook applications like Groups.
"I've read every single one of the reviews," he said, when asked about reviews from users who didn't understand what the point of the app was. "The specific review [that] was 'what is the purpose of this?' -- that's what we're really onto, and I'm surprised more people aren't building in this space. I do think execution wise we have a lot to work on."
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The troubled for-profit college chain is set to be sold to a student loan agency with no experience running university campuses. So why is the Department of Education celebrating the deal?
Molly Hensley-Clancy for BuzzFeed News
The Department of Education has landed in hot water among critics for its enthusiastic endorsement of the sale of a group of for-profit college campuses to a controversial student loan agency.
The Department of Education reached an agreement to essentially shut down Corinthian Colleges, one of the country's largest for-profit college operators, forcing the company to sell off or close all of its campuses nationwide. A BuzzFeed News investigation this month showed Corinthian, owner of the Everest University chain, to be one of the worst actors in a controversial industry, using aggressive and deceptive sales tactics to lure poor and minority students into overpriced degree programs.
But when the nonprofit ECMC Group announced plans last week to buy 56 of Corinthian's campuses, many eyebrows were raised. Critics questioned every aspect of the sale, alleging that ECMC, which has no experience in operating any institution of higher education, is woefully unprepared to take on the task of rehabilitating some of the country's most troubled college campuses.
The federal government disagrees. In a press release lauding the deal, the Department of Education emphasized the schools would be converted to nonprofits and said it was "pleased to help students transition from a problematic for-profit company to a nonprofit that is committed to giving students a new start and more opportunities for success."
That praise contrasted with the concern among ECMC's critics. The student loan agency has been accused of "ruthless tactics" in trying to prevent people from discharging their debt via bankruptcy, and a for-profit debt-collection agency owned by ECMC Group, Premiere Credit, has been criticized for predatory and unethical tactics in several recent reports.
"Any group with no expertise as an education company, I would have said it was strange," said Ben Miller, a senior research analyst with the New America Foundation. "But this one in particular has a history of extremely aggressive tactics and extremely high compensation for its CEO and debt collector — it raises a lot of questions."
The question is this: Why would the Department of Education endorse such a sale?
Robyn Smith, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center, which published one of the most prominent reports on ECMC and Premiere Credit's troubled debt collection practices, said the government's motives were partly financial: It stood to lose as much a billion dollars if a buyer could not be found for Corinthian's schools and the campuses were forced to shut down. In that situation, the government would be compelled to offer current students loan forgiveness.
"The DOE is concerned about wanting to help students complete their educations, but they also have concerns about having to discharge a very large number of loans if the campus closes," said Smith. She said the National Consumer Law Center has "serious concerns" about ECMC's ability to handle the campuses it bought and about past violations by the group's debt collection agency.
Finding a buyer for a large number of Corinthian schools was seeming increasingly unlikely, industry observers said, given the state of the campuses and the increasingly hostile regulatory environment for for-profit colleges. The schools, which included Everest College and two smaller chains, Wyotech and Heald, had seen sharp enrollment declines and were facing four lawsuits and a dozen state investigations; many other for-profit college companies, the most likely buyers for the schools, are dealing with financial problems and investigations of their own.
So the department may jump on any offer to to buy up the bulk of Corinthian's campuses as a favorable one, even with ECMC's troubled history and questionable education experience. The government also received $12 million of the paltry $24 million sale price, money it says will go to students.
ECMC's nonprofit status allows the department to avoid the stigma of transferring one troubled for-profit college into the hands of another. And as nonprofit colleges, many of the programs at schools purchased by ECMC will not be regulated by the Obama administration's new "gainful employment" rule, which cracks down on for-profit colleges.
The ECMC Group, however, is not a traditional nonprofit: Its debt collection agency is a for-profit subsidiary, and its executive compensation has been called "exorbitant"; the group paid its former CEO $1.1 million in 2010. One of its top debt collector's salaries that year, Bloomberg pointed out, reached $450,000. And the government historically gave federal loan guarantee contracts only to nonprofits, Miller said, so the ECMC Group is a nonprofit in part by necessity: "It's using its tax status for incentives."
For its part, ECMC has acknowledged that its purchase of Corinthian campuses is a business play as much at is a chance to, as it says, "help students." Like Sallie Mae, ECMC Group once did the bulk of its business in federal student loan origination, but the government stopped contracting federal loans to private organizations in 2010. Without the ability to originate new loans, ECMC's $39 billion portfolio is dwindling every year.
"Over time our core business will eventually go away," said Dave Hawn, ECMC's CEO. "This is a pivot for us — a transformational move directly into higher education." He added, "We don't anticipate it to be anywhere near as profitable [as student loan origination], but that's why it's a nonprofit."
It's a "pretty sweetheart deal" for ECMC, said Miller. "They had this big chunk of cash lying around" that, as a nonprofit, they were required to spend. "For very little money, they picked up 39,000 students," Miller said.
Hawn said he has been "disappointed" by the emphasis on the group's debt collection agency, which he calls "highly compliant," and its court battles against bankrupt debtors. The pivot, Hawn said, is "towards helping students."
As for the widespread doubts about the company's ability to transform Corinthian's troubled schools, Hawn said, "I know right now our press release is just a lot of words on a page, but we will do what we say we're going to do. I ask for people to give us a chance to show that we're very serious about what we're embarking on. We're very excited about it."
When it comes to the Department of Education's role in the Corinthian sale, experts have been critical of more than the choice of ECMC.
"Former students are really in a bind in this deal — they're left with no form of relief, and the department isn't doing much to give it to them," Smith said.
As part of the sale, ECMC has taken on none of the liabilities to current or former students for Corinthian's past actions; all liability will remain with the near-broke company, which will be left with few assets and very little cash, and thus no money with which to pay settlements to students. And the Department of Education has shown little willingness to help students deal with their federal loan debt, Smith said, by, for example, creating a recognized process to assert loan repayment claims against the company.
Students could technically file claims with the government based on Corinthian's widespread unethical practices, Smith said, but "students aren't able to navigate these things on their own. They don't even know the option exists, much less how to enter the process or gather evidence."
The tens of thousands of former Corinthian students who cannot pay their loans — the company had the worst default rate in the industry, according to a 2012 Senate report — will soon see their debts handed over to collection agencies like ECMC's Premiere Credit. If they try to discharge those loans in bankruptcy, claiming "undue hardship," they are likely to run up against an ECMC lawyer trying to disprove their claims.
As Miller put it, "It's pretty ironic that a company that's an expert at debt collection now owns a school that's exceedingly good at sending students into debt."
It looks like Twitter’s finance chief Anthony Noto thought he was messaging another Twitter executive about buying a company. DMs can be tricky.
Brian Ach / Getty Images
It seems Twitter's new chief financial officer hasn't gotten the hang of Twitter just yet.
Twitter CFO Anthony Noto committed a classic Twitter error by accidentally tweeting out a suggestion that Twitter should buy a company, in what looks like a classic case of DM Fail. Noto is one of Twitter's newest prize hires, and as a Goldman Sachs banker, helped take the company public.
Noto is, of course, not the first high-profile user to accidentally tweet out what would otherwise be a direct message. And not long after he made the faux pas, one of the best-known casualties of the DM fail stepped in to joke about it.
Prominent investor Whitney Tilson did not like his experience with the Hertz counter at the San Francisco airport, so he did something about it. Here’s a look at how a few complaint emails from a “well-known shareholder” gets results.
Look enraging/familiar?
Whitney Tilson
It's an all-too-familiar scene to travelers: you get off a long flight, wind your way through the various airport nightmares, and finally arrive at the car rental counter, only to discover an endless line and one or two people manning the booth.
It's infuriating, sure. But what can you do?
It turns out you can do a lot, if you happen to be a very extraordinary specimen: a hedge fund manager. And not just any hedge fund manager, but one whose funds hold a decent-sized stake in the car rental company you just happen to be wasting your extremely valuable time waiting in line for.
This was the exact scenario at the San Francisco Airport Hertz counter when Whitney TIlson, a well-known value investor and part-time shade thrower showed up. What follows is a step-by-step guide based on an email Tilson sent to his industry peers, on how to stand up for justice at the car rental counter and get results. Real results. As in, a CEO-getting-fired kind of result.
Via tumblr.com
Whitney Tilson
The sales really take place on Thanksgiving and Saturday now. Poll: would you shop on Thanksgiving?
marekuliasz/marekuliasz
There's a new boss in town in the world of frenzied holiday retail, analysts say: This year, the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend is set to topple Black Friday as the year's biggest shopping day.
As the retail industry attempts to drum up more sales by opening ever earlier, spending that once happened on Black Friday has been shift to Thanksgiving Day. ShopperTrak, a prominent retail analytics firm, said earlier this month that this is the year when Black Friday finally loses its throne.
Thanksgiving-day sales more than tripled to $2.5 billion last year, while Black Friday sales fell 13% to $9.8 billion, Sterne Agee analysts wrote in a Nov. 24 note. This year, the trend is expected to accelerate as retailers advertise even earlier openings for their "Black Friday" (but really, Thanksgiving Thursday) events.
This Thanksgiving, J.C. Penney and Best Buy will open at 5 p.m. while Macy's, Target, Walmart and major malls will open at 6 p.m. Gap's Old Navy chain will open at 4 p.m. on Thanksgiving and stay open for 31 straight hours before finally closing at 11 p.m. Friday.
"The earlier openings simply spread sales out, and will not result in incremental sales," Jennifer Davis, an analyst at Buckingham Research Group wrote in a note. Last year, 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day was the new industry-accepted opening time, which was bumped up from midnight in 2012, she wrote.
Referring to many of the deals this weekend as Black Friday sales "is just really silly now," said Wendy Liebmann, CEO of WSL Strategic Retail in New York. "It didn't even make sense before, because that wasn't the day retailers made money anyway, but that was the myth around it."
"If this isn't the year, then its grim luster will be diminished soon," Liebmann said of Black Friday losing its top-sales day status to Super Saturday.
Opening on Thanksgiving comes with its own set of problems, particularly for the low-paid retail workers that would rather spend the day with their families. And images of mobs bursting through the gates of local malls have began to sour a national day of gratitude with rampant, sometimes violent, consumerism. Earlier this month, Walmart announced plans to offer five days of deals, showing the diminishing importance of a single day.
It's possible the industry may try to move deals back into Black Friday next year or halt the Thanksgiving sales tradition, though it will require some coordinated movement, Liebmann said.
"We've heard various levels of uproar about it but I think this year, especially because so many retailers have come out so much earlier with their deals, there's a sense that it will be an advantage for those who finally say, 'Listen, we've just gone too far, we're a great place, we take care of our people, we're not going to be open all these hours,'" she said. "Increasingly, there's just no real massive advantage to this."
After more than 20 years of declining sales, Anheuser-Busch thinks the way to revive the Budweiser brand is by marketing and advertising exclusively to 20-somethings with less Clydesdales and more Jay-Z. Will it work?
Anheuser-Busch / Via budweiser.com
According to a story in today's Wall Street Journal, Budweiser plans to exclusively focus future marketing and advertising efforts on the 20-something demographic. Anheuser-Busch InBev, the beer's parent company, told the Journal that internal research shows that 44% of drinkers between the ages of 21 and 27 have never even tried Budweiser. A number of factors, among them the rise of craft beers and microbrews, the cannibalization of Budweiser sales by Bud Light and Coors Light, and increased marketing and promotion of wine and other hard liquors as a more sophisticated alternative to beer generally has contributed to a decline in Budweiser sales of more than 50% since its peak in 1988.
But changing a brand's perception isn't easy, particularly one that consumers think says something about their identity. Just ask McDonald's, which is going through a similar repositioning in the face of millennial flight. With that in mind, we devised a poll to see what exactly Budweiser is up against.
Anheuser-Busch / Via budweiser.com
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Journalists given four weeks to beat each other to a higher “score” and keep jobs.
SYDNEY – Australian Broadcasting Corporation management came under fire on Monday for pitting journalists against each other to fight for jobs, in what staff have internally called “a sick version of The Hunger Games”.
BuzzFeed News has obtained documents showing the public broadcaster has put reporters into competitive "pools" and asked them to prove their "merit" to the organisation, challenged to hit benchmarks against their colleagues, or face the sack.
The ABC launched the radical process after Managing Director Mark Scott announced 400 people would lose their jobs following the Government's strident budget cuts.
"The morale right now? Zero," one ABC News Sydney reporter told BuzzFeed.
"People knew cuts were coming but we had no idea how bad it would be or that managers would be this sociopathic."
Dan Peled / AAP
Britta Campion / AAP
Five regional newsrooms will shut and TV production is being scaled back. An even more brutal fate awaits 100 news reporters the ABC has announced it will cut.
ABC sources have told BuzzFeed News the dramatic events began shortly after Scott's speech to staff on Monday morning, with emails arriving in reporters inboxes telling them they had been placed in "pools" based on salary and expertise.
Each pool then had its own meeting and were told that members would be assessed against each other in a four week personal "skills audit". They would then be given, as one manager referred it: "a score on a ladder".
ABC 7:30
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The brainchild of Christopher Burch is closing up to 20 of its 32 locations and transitioning into a wholesale brand, BuzzFeed News has learned.
C. Wonder / Via Facebook: CWonderStore
C. Wonder, the chain created by Tory Burch's ex-husband Christopher in 2011, has plans to shutter most of its stores and transition into a wholesale brand, BuzzFeed News has learned.
The retailer will close up to 20 of its 32 locations by Jan. 1, depending on how lease negotiations unfold, two people familiar with the matter told BuzzFeed News on the condition of anonymity. C. Wonder, which bears a close likeness to Tory Burch's luxury brand, though is less expensive, has trimmed its corporate staff to around 75 people from near 120 in the past year, one person estimated. At least three top executives have left since the end of September. Store leaders were warned about the impending closures about a month ago, two people said.
It's a dismal turn for a retail brand whose conception seemed to be as much about a man's ego as it was about building something new.
J. Christopher Burch, a venture capitalist, opened the first C. Wonder in 2011, drawing a flurry of press centered around how similar his brand looked to Tory Burch's label. (The couple divorced in 2006.) "It's unclear whether this is an amicable homage or a hostile takeover," The New York Times observed at the time, adding: "The Burch marriage may have ended, but the former spouses share an aesthetic and apparent corporate strategy of selling emblems of the upper class to the masses."
According to New York magazine, Tory Burch viewed C. Wonder's design and layout as "a deliberate attempt by her ex-husband to confuse the consumer into thinking the two brands are associated, à la Kate and Jack Spade."
C. Wonder's founding was made extra intriguing by Chris Burch's seat on Tory Burch LLC's board at the time, and his investment in the company, which he cofounded with the designer while they were married. Chris Burch, for his part, has dismissed comparisons between the color-popping, high-end C. Wonder and Tory Burch, saying his aesthetic "has always been classic and preppy." (Daniela Maron, a spokeswoman for C. Wonder, declined to comment for this story.)
Jemal Countess / WireImage,
Marketers, management gurus and media chin-scratchers love to talk about the so-called millennial generation. Here’s a PR pitch sent to BuzzFeed News that contains the word 20 times.
A man, possibly a millennial man, takes a selfie with camels at a farm in Taif, Saudi Arabia
Stringer / Reuters
We may or may not be approaching Peak PR Pitch, but surely Peak Millennial is not far away. Marketers of all stripes seem to love the word more than ever, even if you'll rarely hear it coming from the mouth of an actual person in their twenties who isn't trying to sell something.
Here's a masterpiece of the genre: a 284-word PR pitch that drops the m-word 22 times. That makes the whole piece 7% millennial: a new benchmark for all that may follow.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 5 Millennial Myths in Workplace
From: Jane Doe < jane@doe.co >
Date: Tue, November 11, 2014 4:10 pm
To: tom.gara@buzzfeed.com
Good Afternoon Tom,
I couldn't help but think … what's more perfect for a story on Millennials than an outlet who's primary consumer is a Millennial.
I am a Millennial who loves the site and clicks on the links daily when I see them pop up on Facebook. I work with an expert in the fields of hiring, training and working with Millennials. Her name is Rose Ernst and she recently published an e-book, "Hiring Millennials: The Generation That Changes Everything."
With that said - I thought there might be interest in a quick-hitting article that revolves around 5 Millennial Myths In The Workplace:
"Meet your new co-workers: The Millennial Generation."
By sheer number alone (90 million), they have the power to influence a major shift in the way we work.
Five Millennial Myths In The Workplace
-Millennials are The "Selfie" Generation
-Millennials are Glued To Their Smartphones
-Millennials aren't Loyal to a Company
-Millennials Need Constant Reassurance and Direction
-Millennials Bring Disruptive Change
Myths Busted:
-The typical Millennial worker is not "all about me." They want to be associated with a company brand that represents positive social values.
-Millennials are Digital Natives - This comfort with automated tools gives them a natural ability to adopt new technology -systems software and tech skills - quickly.
-Millennials are Loyal-Lite: Expect some turnover, but overall they are just as loyal as past generations.
-Millennials are fueled by feedback and evaluation keeps them engaged.
-Millennials are The New Intra-Preneurs: challenge traditional work model. Contrary to portrayal, most Millennials are respectful to senior staff and supervisors and obedient to company polices.
William Dudley faced a grilling from a group of senators scornful over the close links between banks and their regulators. He told them he sees his role more as a “fire warden” than a “cop on the beat.”
Chip East / Reuters
Gary Cameron / Reuters
The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York faced a grilling from the Senate Banking Committee on Friday, following revelations that one of its former employees had been fired by Goldman Sachs for accessing regulatory information about one of the banks it oversees.
In one of her many rounds of questioning, Elizabeth Warren told William Dudley that change in the New York Fed's culture "has to come from the top" and "you need to fix it, or we need to get someone who will."
The hearing was spurred be revelations by a former bank examiner at the Fed, Carmen Segarra, who was fired after clashing with her superiors over how harsh to be on the banks she examined, including Goldman Sachs. In hours of tapes she secretly recorded documenting conversations with other Fed staffers as well as with Goldman, the New York Fed comes off as unwilling to confront banks directly even when its own staffers think there is wrongdoing. Segarra sued the New York Fed after she was fired, but a judge threw out the case after ruling her termination didn't fall under the whistleblower standard.
"We are here today because of issues raised by Carmen Segarra," Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown said. "She has done a public service by bringing them to light." Brown also said Segarra was present at the hearing.
On Thursday night, the Federal Reserve in Washington announced a review of its bank supervision. The Fed's Inspector General will review whether Fed officials can get all the "necessary information" they need when overseeing banks and if "channels exist" for Fed officials "to be aware of divergent views among an examination team regarding material issues."
The Fed also said it will be doing its own review of those issues for its own examination of the largest banks, which would include titans like Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan. On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that Goldman Sachs had fired two employees after one of them, a former New York Fed banking supervisor, accessed confidential information from the New York Fed about one of Goldman's clients.
This put Dudley in the hot seat. He was previously a partner at Goldman Sachs and served as its chief U.S. economist before joining the Fed in 2007. Dudley brought in an outside expert, Columbia professor David Beim, to review the New York Fed's bank supervision. Jack Reed, the Rhode Island senator, said that there is a perception that there are "no fences" between Dudley — and the other 11 regional Fed presidents — and the banks they regulate. Dudley said that the implemented some of Beim's suggestions, but had not spoken to him since he wrote the report in 2009 — that is, until today.
Beim's 2009 report, which was previously secret, was brought to light by a ProPublica report done in partnership with This American Life. The report criticized a culture of deference to banks and fear of vocal disagreement between New York Fed staffers.
Dudley, however, defended himself as a steward of the financial system, saying his role was more like being a "fire warden" as opposed to Warren's preferred "cop on the beat." Dudley described this job as "making sure that if the institution is stressed, it doesn't burn down."
Dudley pointed to changes in the banking system since the financial crisis, including a smaller proportion of bank activity funded by debt, regular reviews by the Fed of how banks will react to massive financial stress, as well as a closer look at how the New York Fed examines the risk management of the banks it supervises. He also said that the Fed had helped "empower risk professionals in the organization to take on revenue producers."
"We should be judged where the banking system is today as opposed to where it was six years ago," Dudley said.
Senator Brown responded: "I'm sure those words would have been said by president Geithner in front of this committee five years ago." With only four liberal senators present at the hearing, no one there considered this a compliment.
While the senators present — all Democrats — lamented the lack of bankers facing jail time following the financial crisis, Dudley stressed that "our primary focus as supervisors isn't enforcement, our primary focus as supervision is making sure it's safe and sound and run well."
Part of that effort has been Dudley's condemnations of the culture of the financial system. In an October speech, Dudley said cultural problems in the banking industry "originate from the culture of the firms, and this culture is largely shaped by the firms' leadership. This means that the solution needs to originate from within the firms, from their leaders." In an earlier speech, Dudley pointed to a "sad state of affairs" where "unethical behavior is socialized among new traders with the explanation that this is business as usual."
But this insistence on the importance of leadership was turned around by the skeptical senators questioning him. Brown pointed to the recent case of a New York Fed employee leaking confidential information to Goldman. "Where do these ethical problems originate?" Brown asked Dudley.
Dudley said in his prepared testimony that they had implemented some of Beim's recommendations like putting more experienced examiners on-site in banks and recruiting outside examiners with more direct experiences, rotating examiners, and encouraging employees to "speak up."
But when pressed by senators on specific issues brought up ProPublica and other publications before the hearing — a deal between Goldman and the Spanish bank Santander that would help reduce its capital requirements, whether Goldman Sachs had a firm-wide conflict-of-interest policy, the failure to further inspect a division of JPMorgan that would later lose over $6 billion in a bad derivatives trade — Dudley defended the New York Fed's actions.
"We definitely want people who speak up and express their views, but what we also want are people who are fact based," Dudley said in reference to Segarra.
Segarra had clashed with her supervisors when she wanted to say formally that Goldman Sachs did not have a conflict of interest policy across the entire firm. Her supervisors disagreed and she was then fired. After the ProPublica/This American Life story aired, Goldman adjusted its own policy on employee stock ownership, banning investment bank employees from owning shares in individual companies.
"Cultures take a very long time to change," Beim said during his testimony. He also suggested tougher rules on the "revolving door", including mandating a three year stay before a regulator could move to a bank.
The move follows a big round of layoffs for the company.
Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia
AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File
In June, Aereo lost a Supreme Court battle in its bid to stream TV shows without paying programming fees.
The court ruled that Aereo was essentially a cable TV company, meaning it would have to pay copyright holders if it wanted to stream their content to subscribers.
In a statement on the company's website today, CEO Chet Kanojia said that that court loss had "has proven difficult to overcome."
"The U.S. Supreme Court decision effectively changed the laws that had governed Aereo's technology, creating regulatory and legal uncertainty. And while our team has focused its energies on exploring every path forward available to us, without that clarity, the challenges have proven too difficult to overcome," he added.
The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York and appointed Argus' Lawton Bloom as Chief Restructuring Officer during its gradual shut down process.
Kanoja said: "Chapter 11 will permit Aereo to maximize the value of its business and assets without the extensive cost and distraction of defending drawn out litigation in several courts."
"We have traveled a long and challenging road. We stayed true to our mission and we believe that we have played a significant part in pushing the conversation forward, helping force positive change in the industry for consumers," he added.
LINK: TV Networks Succeed In Killing Aereo In Supreme Court
LINK: The Streaming Startup That Could Break TV
JPMorgan’s sponsorships division is on a tear this year, giving customers exclusive early access to Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s tour and now David Guetta’s new album today, set to drop on Nov. 24. The latest move is a partnership with Apple Pay.
One department within JPMorgan Chase has spent the better part of a year trying to remind its customers just how much it pays to bank with Chase. It isn't traditional marketing, advertising or even client service folks leading this charge, but the company's sponsorships division, known as Sports and Entertainment, that has given Chase customers special access to everything from the U.S. Open to Chicago Bears games, the Radio City Rockettes and their Christmas Spectacular, to, probably most notably, Jay-Z and Beyoncé's On the Run tour, which allowed Chase customers early ticket purchasing and other perks.
And now, in conjunction with Apple Pay, JPMorgan is tapping into a new audience in electronic dance music, giving Chase customers with an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus early, and perhaps more importantly, free access to 'Listen,' the latest album from EDM superstar David Guetta beginning today—three days before Atlantic Records' November 24 scheduled release of the album.
"We're offering 'Listen' the weekend before it comes out to the general public, if you have Apple Pay, you'll be able to listen to the whole album for free," said Steve Pamon, JPMorgan's head of Sports and Entertainment. "It's a big incentive to be a Chase customer and try Apple Pay for the first time."
As for why the bank chose to partner with Guetta, Pamon told BuzzFeed News that the decision was an easy one.
"For us, being a core bank around innovation and progressive movement, the chance to partner with David is just an opportunity we couldn't pass up," Pamon said. "If you think about [Apple Pay], there's a target psychographic for that, folks willing to try new things and who are careful to think about what they do. David is on the forefront of using technology to make people happy. There's no better artist in the world that we think represents that."
Rukes
For Guetta, the feeling is mutual.
"Collaborating is a part of what I do in my creative process and it made sense to collaborate with partners Chase and Apple Pay to do something that has not been done before," Guetta told BuzzFeed News. "I love innovation and reinvention, I've tried to do this with the songs on my new album 'Listen'. And it is a special treat for my U.S. fans who can get access to my album as a gift from Chase three days before it goes on sale and also open up my music to people it may be new to."
Though the the bank invests a lot of time and resources into figuring out the best way to reach customers through its sponsorship programs, Chase didn't have to think too hard about its last major partnership effort, with Jay-Z and Beyoncé's On the Run tour, which offered Chase customers an exclusive presale to purchase tickets ahead of anyone else. Nearly 350,000 of them did—a massive number. The sponsorship decision for On the Run is emblematic of Chase's growing efforts in the space, something they've devoted more and more resources to this year.
Just last week the bank sponsored the Concert for Valor, a huge live event in Washington DC honoring veterans that featured artists like Bruce Springsteen, Rihanna, Eminem, Metallica, and Jennifer Hudson, to name just a few.
"We've always had an established base in sponsorship, if you go back 30 years, all of our brands have been involved with with sports, and now you're starting to see a real push for entertainment," Pamon said. "We are starting to go where our consumers are going, with live performances and music. The On the Run tour was as close to a home run as you could get as far as partners, and we think David [Guetta] is the same way."
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New York state’s banking regulator asked the firm not to disclose it terminated a senior banker. The Department of Financial services said revealing the firing would interfere with its investigation of an alleged data leak from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Manakin/Manakin
Six weeks ago, two Goldman Sachs bankers were fired after the bank discovered that one improperly accessed confidential regulatory information from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the other, a senior manager, saw the information but failed to report it.
But it was only this week, after details of the story were leaked to the media, that the news was made public. That's despite the fact that Goldman was required, within one month of firing the senior banker, to make a public disclosure including the reasons for his termination.
The company didn't meet that deadline. Goldman only made the disclosure -- via a form required by FINRA, the financial industry self-regulator -- this Wednesday, after being contacted by the New York Times, which had learned of details of the firings.
Goldman missed the deadline because it was allowed to -- FINRA gave it permission, a source familiar with the situation said, because the bank had been asked by the New York state Department of Financial Services not to file the report, so as not to obstruct an investigation by the department. The FBI and Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office are also investigating, according to the Times.
The newspaper contacted Goldman about its story on Wednesday, in timing that put both Goldman and New York Fed in an awkward position. On Thursday, three Goldman Sachs executives — along with other bank leaders — were scheduled to be questioned by a Senate panel over the role of large banks in the commodities markets. And on Friday, the head of the New York Fed, William Dudley, will be questioned by a different Senate panel on the "capture" of regulators by the financial industry.
That kind of regulatory capture is at the heart of the problems that led to the firings. The junior banker who was let go, Rohit Bansal, joined Goldman in July after spending seven years at the New York Fed, where he worked as a bank examiner. He joined Goldman's financial institutions group, which advises other banks, including ones he would have overseen in his time at the New York Fed.
The senior banker let go, Joseph Jiampietro, was a managing director in Bansal's group. He joined the firm in February, 2011 following over a year working as an advisor to Sheila Bair, who at the time was chairwoman of the FDIC, another bank regulator. Bair often took an aggressive stance toward banks and the regulators she perceived as being too close to them, and since leaving the FDIC has spoken out against the so-called "revolving door" between banks and their government overseers. Before joining the FDIC, Jiampietro was a financial institutions banker — meaning he advised other banks — at JPMorgan and UBS.
"Mr. Jiampietro never knowingly or improperly reviewed or misused confidential supervisory information," Jiampietro's lawyer, Adam Ford, said in a statement in response to the Times. "He should not have been terminated. Any compliance failings regarding Mr. Bansal had nothing to do with Mr. Jiampietro."
Bansal's attorney Sean Casey did not respond to a request for comment and Ford said he had no further comment. The New York state Department of Financial Services declined to comment, citing an ongoing investigation.
The firing of the two bankers is the latest fallout from increased scrutiny of Goldman's relationship with the New York Fed. Following the initial broadcast of tapes recorded by former Fed supervisor Carmen Segarra that depicted a cozy and non-confrontational relationship between Goldman and its supervisors, Goldman banned employee ownership of individual stocks. While at the New York Fed, Segarra had wanted to get the Fed to say officially that Goldman had no firm-wide conflicts of interest policy and pointed to a senior banker's financial stake in a firm that was seeking to acquire the banker's client.
The Federal Reserve announced Thursday afternoon that its inspector general was looking into its supervision of banks with more than $50 billion in assets, which would include megabanks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. The review will address whether Fed officials are getting the information they need from large banks and if they know about possible dissenting or divergent opinions among the frontline examiners of banks.
The Fed's inspector general will investigate whether Fed officials can "obtain all material information necessary to ensure that decisions and supervisory conclusions...are appropriate, supported by the record, and consistent with supervisory policies." The inspector general will also look into whether Fed officials have "channels, both within and outside the immediate chain of command" that alert them to "divergent views about material issues."
The for-profit-college operator, plagued by complaints from students and regulators, is shutting down. But the planned new owner of its schools has problems of its own.
Photograph by Molly Hensley-Clancy for BuzzFeed News
Corinthian Colleges, the disgraced for-profit college operator that is being forced out of business by the Department of Educatio, announced today that it plans to sell most of its campuses to a nonprofit that has been accused of "ruthless tactics" in its handling of student debtors.
Corinthian said it plans to sell 56 of its Everest and Wyotech College campuses to the nonprofit ECMC Group, a student loan guarantor, for $24 million. The for-profit colleges will become nonprofits after the sale, creating the largest nonprofit career college chain in the country, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The sale includes all of the Everest and Wyotech College campuses outside of California.
ECMC group has been widely criticized for its handling of some student loan debtors. The government has frequently turned to ECMC Group to fight student loan debtors who try to discharge their federal loans in bankruptcy. In order to discharge those loans — they are usually excluded from bankruptcy proceedings — debtors must prove that they face "undue hardship."
A New York Times article earlier this year revealed that ECMC had fought to prevent a bankrupt cancer survivor inundated by medical bills from discharging her loan debt, arguing that because she was younger, she was more likely to survive her pancreatic cancer.
In another case, ECMC fought in court to garnish the Social Security payments of a woman who had already paid off her student loans in full. The nonprofit was eventually sanctioned by a judge for "abusing the bankruptcy process," the Times reported.
ECMC immediately announced its intentions to make the campuses, which constitute all of the Everest and Wyotech chains outside of California, more affordable, cutting Everest's notoriously high tuition by 20%. It also said it would no longer use the aggressive and sometimes misleading recruiting strategies that have brought many for-profit colleges under fire.
The sale is likely to face opposition from critics of ECMC. But the Department of Education has already announced its support for the deal. "We are glad that Corinthian has reached an agreement with ECMC Group and believe that this transition will allow students to maintain progress toward achieving their educational and career goals and protect taxpayers' investment, while Corinthian moves out of the business," said department Under Secretary Ted Mitchell in a statement.
Corinthian is being sued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and attorneys general in California, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin, and faces investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and six more states, as well as a criminal probe in California.
Gap’s soon-to-be CEO acknowledged the campaign is a “work in process,” but the company is “really excited about elements of it.”
Gap Inc.
Gap's "Dress Normal" campaign, a play on the normcore trend, has been criticized by fashionistas and analysts for missing the mark with its core customers this fall — but the company is standing by it.
Dress Normal is "a work in process," digital chief and soon-to-be CEO Art Peck said in an interview with BuzzFeed News this week. "It's working on some dimensions, and then we have work to do on others, which is very typical for the first time out on an advertising campaign. It's got a lot of conversation and a lot of dialogue about it...I've been with the agency and our marketing team, and we're really excited about elements of it, and there are other places where we still need to get it dialed in."
Gap unveiled Dress Normal in August. It's been viewed as a nod to normcore, which is the ironic embrace of nondescript, "ardently ordinary clothes," as New York magazine put it. However, critics say the irony may be lost on Gap's core customer, who doesn't want to be told that what she's getting is average or basic — rather, she'd like to be on-trend. The company has been discounting its fall collection heavily and same-store sales, a measure that excludes the effect of new stores, slid in August, September and October. (Gap reports earnings later today.) Wall Street analysts complained the clothes in stores this fall were "too 'normal,'" and that the apparel and ad campaign failed to entice shoppers.
But Peck said the call to Dress Normal still has time to prove itself.
"You never know, I think, until you have a couple seasons into a marketing platform whether it's going to be something customers respond to and relate to and want to engage with on an ongoing basis," he said. "When we came out with the Be Bright campaign back in 2012, it took a few seasons for us to figure out whether we were really getting traction there and whether customers saw beyond the bright of color to the broader meaning of bright. So stay tuned."
Gap Inc.
Nielsen will use its in-home People Meter system to track viewing of streaming TV services like Netflix and Amazon Prime. But insiders say the planned service has many holes.
Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
Money and data are the twin engines driving television industry economics, so the news today that Nielsen will start measuring viewing on Netflix and Amazon Prime for the first time ever seems like a big deal. But it isn't really.
It is, as one television industry source who spoke with BuzzFeed News said, a step in the right direction, but not a silver bullet.
After all, just last week during third quarter earnings, executives from every major network owner publicly stated their dissatisfaction with how Nielsen, the industry's leading ratings agency, tracks ratings, particularly for streaming, mobile, and on-demand services.
So the fact that Nielsen will be rolling out a new service next month that will use its in-home "people meters" to detect audio components of shows to identify which ones are being streamed and how often is more an appeasement than a revolution.
Neither Netflix nor Amazon Prime releases actual viewer figures on specific shows, even originals of their own. Netflix, for instance, opts for an opaque figure of overall streaming hours for its entire service globally. Both services keep specific streaming data to themselves and use it to determine what licensing deals to renew, which to get rid of, and what new ones to go after.
"It is always better as a buyer to know exactly what something is worth, while the seller has no real idea what the value of that content to the buyer is, which puts Netflix in a unique position," said BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield.
The idea behind Nielsen's new service, which according to the Wall Street Journal doesn't need consent from Netflix or Amazon, is to bring that dynamic into better balance. Its true aim is to arm network owners with more data to better determine the value of their programming in licensing deals and whether or not selling its shows to these services is hurting traditional TV viewing.
"The data could ripple through Hollywood, changing the power dynamics in the negotiations between streaming sites and TV studios that license them content," the Journal said in its report.
Well, not quite.
There are several major holes is Nielsen's new service, not the least of which is that it won't measure viewing on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices, which is where most streaming from these services occur. Further, these services are global in nature, while Nielsen's service only measures domestically.
Secondly, no one in the television industry actually trusts Nielsen's data. It was only last month that Nielsen had a glitch in its traditional television measurement that resulted in faulty ratings for the major broadcast networks.
That mistrust of Nielsen dovetails with another indisputable fact: Netflix and Amazon cut huge checks to license shows from the TV networks. Netflix alone, according to its most recently quarterly earning filing, will pay out roughly $9 billion to media companies under its current licensing deals. That's revenue that didn't exist until a few years ago.
Even if Nielsen's data unequivocally shows that licensing shows to streaming services is indeed eating into traditional television viewership — as all the trend lines currently suggest — it will still be hard for network owners to turn down that sweet Netflix cash. If they did, they would need to find a way to refill that money hole, and holding back shows to get higher retransmission and carriage fees from traditional pay-TV distributors is unlikely to be sufficient given how much those companies already pay out to network owners.
"I think Netflix will say 'Do you want our money or not,' and I doubt the networks will believe the Nielsen stats," Greenfield said.
